The Little Piano Girl: The Story of Mary Lou Williams, Jazz Legend

Summary of Book

What if you loved music more than anything? Suppose you had just learned to play the piano. Imagine that your family has to move to a new city and you have to leave your piano behind. People don’t like you in the new city because of what you look like. How will you make yourself feel better? Mary Lou Williams, like Mozart, began playing the piano when she was four; at eight she became a professional musician. She wrote and arranged music for Duke Ellington, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and was one of the most powerful women in jazz. This is the story of Mary Lou's childhood in Pittsburgh, where she played the piano for anyone who would listen.

Author Biographies

Ann Ingalls and Maryann Macdonald are sisters and lifelong music lovers. Ann lives in Kansas City, and Maryann lives in New York. This is Ann's first book, and Maryann's twenty-second.

Illustrator Biography

My parents and grandparents were all artists so it's not surprising that I became one too. I spent a lot of time in my grandfather's studio, where he let me add to his abstract paintings and music. When I was three, my parents started a puppet theater company called "The Mystic Paper Beasts" and my sister and I traveled and performed with them through out the United States and Europe. My drawings and illustrated journals from my travel and experiences with the Beasts, inspire me still and led to the children's books "The Year I Didn't Go To School" and "Chloe's Birthday..and me"
I graduated from Rhode Island School of Design in 1994 and spent my last year in Rome with RISD's European Honors Program. Chronicle Books then published "Lucy's Eyes and Margaret's Dragon;Lives of the Virgin Saints" a book of saint paintings and stories I made while I was in Rome.
After moving to Brooklyn, I got my first freelance illustration job with the New Yorker. My New Yorker illustrations inspired a lucky chain of work with many magazines and children's books.
My first children's book, "Mr. Semolina-Semolinus; a Greek folk tale" was published in 1997, and I have illustrated more than thirty books since then. I have illustrated stories by such authors as Toni Morrison, Mary Pope Osborne, Ursula Hegi, Mathea Harvey and Gertrude Stein. I illustrated and wrote my two most recent books;Tell Me What to Dream About and This is My Dollhouse.
I have also continued to do editorial illustration too and I currently illustrate a weekly column for the New York Times called Ties.
I live with my husband and two daughters in the Hudson Valley.